HGM 2011 - Dubai, UAE
EDISON LIU - Abstract
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Edison T. Liu
Title: Genomic Medicine in Cancer Care
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Genomic medicine involves the provision of medical care that uses the power of genomic knowledge and technologies to resolve complex problems. The fundamental difference between this and older strategies in medicine research is the comprehensiveness and the precision of the analyses afforded by new genomic technologies such as in sequencing, cloning, and genotyping. The new challenge will be the assembly and management of this high volume of data with dimensional complexity. Genomic medicine therefore means computational and systems medicine as well. Operationally, systems biology requires the digitalization of biological output, the computational power to analyze comprehensive and massive datasets, and the capacity to integrate heterogeneous data into a usable knowledge format. There is no field more suitable for genomic strategies in clinical care than cancer. The precision and the completeness of the genomic analysis will allow for the stratification of patients at risk for cancer, for therapeutic resistance, and for drug side effects. This will not only improve care, but also reduce the cost of health care at the systems level. The availability of genome sequences will change the face of biomedical research and of medicine. Individual genomes that do not change in life can be assessed at one time. Therefore one’s complete genetic profile is accessible potentially as a clinical test. As with other technologies, genome sequencing of this magnitude raises clear legal and social challenges. In the same way that personal computers and the internet has changed our social activities and redefined privacy, the same will be true of personal genomic information. We will describe how genomic approaches are changing our understanding of cancer, as a model system. Our work, at the Genome Institute of Singapore, in transcriptional profiling has led to transcription factor binding site dynamics, and human variations in those binding sites. We employ a strategy of using genomic data to reconstruct systems maps of critical regulatory networks. This integrative approach permits modeling of complex interactions and allowed us to quickly uncover complex mechanisms of drug action. Coupled with the dramatic expansion of disease gene discovery in population studies, we now find that rather than a few genes, hundreds of genes may be involved in the genesis of a single complex disease. Harnessing complexity will be our next great challenge. |
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Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum |
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Human Genome Organisation |
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Centre for Arab Genomic Studies |
